Twilight Awakening
by xxxPiratePrincessxxx
Summary: Bella wakes in a sterile room with a hallucinogenic IV in her arm and a woman by her side. The woman, who is not goddess-like in any way, is a vampire, and informs Bella that all she believes of wolves and vampires is a lie. A realistic try on the saga.
1. Chapter 1

It was late in the night when Anne realised that her assistant was missing. She could sense it, like an instinct, something missing on the other side of her bedroom wall. Sliding out from under the covers, she placed a quick kiss on Lionel's blonde head and slipped out of the door toward the top floor stairs, knowing instantly where her lost protégé was hiding.

Her bare feet barely made a sound as she ascended the stairwell, coming to where the ceiling met the stairs and the square door was shut above her, the cord swaying slightly.

"Bella," Anne called softly, pushing on the heavy iron latch.

Isabella Swan crouched in the midst of multiple sheaves of paper, her white fingers still clutching a ragged envelope and a serrated letter-opener in the other. The intruder took a moment to take in the image, letting the door swing gently on its hinge and let light spill into the cluttered attic.

A young woman of about twenty looked upward at her, with plenty of soft chocolate hair and a naturally pale skin tone, darkened to a light tan by the rare Atlanta sun. She had average, if not pretty features; a curious mouth and pleasant brown eyes, with a strong bone structure and a high, unassuming forehead. Beneath the folds of her plum-silk robe, she had a slender frame, all roundness and curve with no angular lines. Her hands and feet were awkwardly large, and a little clumsy, as was her state of being.

_Like a child,_ Anne thought fondly, not for the first time.

Under Anne's sympathetic gaze, Bella ducked her head under her long, dark hair and stuffed the letter back into the envelope, discreetly dislodging a few tears in the process.

"Anne." Bella greeted with measured emotion. Anne didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She just tilted her head, gathered up the scattered papers, and began to sort them into their respective boxes, waiting patiently for Bella to crack.

It didn't take long.

"Anne," Bella said again, her calm exterior vanishing and her voice distorted with pain.

"Oh Bella," Anne sighed, hunkering down next to her and taking the brunette in her arms. Bella laid her head in her lap and began to sob, dry, tortured gasps that seemed to come from deep within, where something had been torn viciously in two.

"My heart, Anne, my heart..." Bella choked, her tears hot and her throat tight. "I know, I know," her comforter whispered, her own cheeks becoming wet. "It's hard. It'll take time. It's OK, Bella, it's OK."

Pressing the broken woman fiercely to her heart, Anne rocked Bella rhythmically, and thought back to when all this first started, when Bella was happy but deluded in her own dangerous, mythical world.

When she believed that vampires, the bestial, ruthless, killing machines of legend, were romantic and sparkly and fangless, and astonishingly beautiful.

When she believed that werewolves, the animalistic plagues of the moon as thoughtless and bloodlust-filled as savagery itself, were boiling teens who could morph at will, muscled and romantically-driven to life-long imprinting.

When she believed in a sickening farce.


	2. Chapter 2

_December 15__th__ 2008, the Cullen household, Carlisle's Laboratory._

Warm. She was warm. It was such a peculiar feeling, Bella noticed it was there.

She wasn't pressed against Edward's ice-cold skin, or shivering in the glacial climate of Forks, in a seemingly forever-lasting winter – it was like being back in Phoenix again, and she could feel a light, crackling material on her body that ended short of her knees – a delicious breeze came and ruffled through her loose hair, and she let out a small laugh.

A few more moments dragged by, then Bella realised there was something uncomfortable digging into the crook of her elbow, as well as her neck, wrists, and many more points around her chest. There was a lazy, cloudy fog settled over her thoughts, and she had trouble following the signals her awakening brain gave – so when her eyes wanted to see, it took a couple more minutes before her lids flickered open, blinking rapidly against the harsh white light that seemed to seep from every corner of her vision.

When the brightness had faded a little, Bella tested her neck, being careful not to disturb whatever was attached to the delicate skin around the hollow and nape. She was in a medical room, with a high ceiling and white, undecorated walls. There was a double-decked silver tray to her near right, with shiny, sterilized equipment arranged neatly on both platforms, and it seemed to rest on a trolley of some sort. She could hear the low hum of a heart-rate monitor behind her, and various other monitors contributed to a steady, quiet drone that quickly faded into background noise.

Bella found that her head couldn't quite move to looking in front of her, so she settled for scanning everything in her vision as her body very slowly began to wake up. She was in a narrow, single bed with an iron frame and thin, plain sheets, and there was a strange memory at being seven, appendix just out, and laying in a bed of the exact same make with the same hygienic, restrained feel.

The crackling material she was wearing turned out to be a paper hospital shift, and to a dull, subdued feeling that was later recognised as alarm, the sharp points in her body were either needles or tubes, all chugging some clear liquid into her bloodstream – or, as she watched the solution gradually reduce from the tube in her arm, they _were_ feeding something in.

_So, the question is, _she managed to think with suitable coherence, _WHY are the tubes emptying? _Just at that moment, Bella felt something de-attach from the back of her neck, and felt her thoughts sharpen at the sudden wave of extreme, blinding pain that exploded from that point.

"Argh!" Bella yelped, and suddenly there were smooth, cool fingers pressing lightly against where the tube had been inserted, in a gesture of comfort.

She heard someone hiss angrily behind her, and then a cold hand carefully inspected the swollen area, before levering Bella gently to a sitting position. A tall young woman who looked about twenty-three edged around the side of the bed, and Bella stared dumbly at her, realizing that she had absolutely no recollection whatsoever of whom this stranger was.

The woman was dressed in a fitted black coat buttoned up to the neck, with round, silver buttons and a forked coat-tail that brushed her ankles – other than the small, wrist-cuffed gloves she wore and a pair of knee-length hiking boots, Bella could see nothing more, as from upturned collar to boot-tip everything underneath was concealed.

Her heart-shaped face was fair-skinned under the bronzed tan, framed with copious amounts of very long, dark- auburn hair, smoothed back into a thick, sleek braid that snaked over her shoulder. She had angular cheekbones, a sloping jaw and a firm, pointed chin, an average forehead that was heightened by the drawback of her heavy tresses, a narrow, Grecian nose and a curiously small mouth, rosy in colour and fuller in the lower lip, with a sharp dip in the bow, reminiscent of the haughty portraits of old English royalty pouting imperiously from their canvases.

Her most impressive feature were her huge, purple-black eyes, rimmed with long, straight lashes and heavy eyelids that gave an up-tilt to each large oculus, and had accentuated them with a trace of ebony kohl tracing the lower waterline, tapering at the crease – the brows above were thin and round, and her body was svelte and trim, with hardly any womanly curves. All in all she was an ominous figure to behold, striking, perhaps – but not beautiful.

For a moment, the woman stayed silent, and Bella realised that she looked slightly nervous. Finally, she spoke.

"Do you –" she began, halting. She bit her lip, then continued. "Do you know who you are?"

Immediately, Bella felt herself grow angry. A good sign, she was finally waking up.

"Of course I do," Bella said, and was shocked to hear her voice rasp in her throat, almost with disuse.

"I'm Isabella Swan, Charlie – I mean, Chief Swan's daughter." Bella's tone became slightly confrontational. "And who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm Anne." Anne replied carefully, her arms extended, as if she was balancing herself before a run.

Bella suddenly noticed that Anne seemed slightly feline – her ears were slightly pointed; her athletic, slender limbs were positioned as if she expected to move quickly any second, and she stood very straight, very erect, with her head tilted back a little and her entire body extremely still. She half expected Anne to meow.

"How did I get here?" Bella pressed.

"You mean...you don't remember?"

"Well," Bella admitted, "I can't remember much after the Volturi left, me, Edward and Rene –"

Suddenly, a thick, solid wall of fear crashed into Bella. Edward. Renesmee. Where were they? Why was she here? Why were there – _Needles. Needles in your arms. Look at your arms, Bella._

Bella slowly looked down.

And screamed.

They were human. Not hard, and smooth and perfect and white, but round and obviously filled with warm, human blood, albeit a little pale. If the colour hadn't have given it away, the needle, which should've never had been able to pierce a vampire's diamond-hard skin, was sunk deep in the crook of her elbow.

Bella yanked out the syringe, forgetting to brace herself for the agony that would follow. Her long fingernails (Long? She always cut her nails short...) dug hard into her palms in response, before Bella clawed frantically at the other syringe, remembering to pull it out gradually.

When all the tubes were removed (torturously, with many a pause to grit her teeth and halt her cries), Bella searched every inch of her body, sliding her palms over her skin and banging her hands against the bed frame, to see if it would break.

Human. Completely, utterly, boringly human. The reflection in the silver tray proved that – a regular face, ordinary, normal brown eyes and soft skin, even with a hint of a tan.

"What did you do to me?" Bella shrieked, and Anne, who had been gazing at Bella with a strange look in her eyes, sighed. Pity. The strange look was pity.

"Bella..." Anne murmured eventually. "You thought you were a vampire, didn't you?"

"What else would I think? I've been a vampire for six months!" Bella snapped coldly back, only realizing later that Anne knew about the vampire world – and presumed she did too.

Anne swore under her breath. "We need to get you out of here," she muttered darkly.

"NO! First, you tell me where MY DAUGHTER is," Bella hissed, jabbing a finger at her. "Then, you tell me where MY HUSBAND is, and after that, you tell me WHAT THE HELL you've done to me, and THEN you run as fast as you can out of here, because I doubt the Cullens are going to let you off ligh –"

Anne interrupted her curling her upper lip and revealing three-inch long, jagged, glossy white fangs that sliding down her chin, and booming a harsh, seamless growl, filled with acid and pure aggression that reverberated in every single bone in Bella's body. She felt shaken and terrified, and Anne seemed to need to calm herself considerably before she could speak again.

"Bella, you have been LIED to. You have been used, and mislead, and brainwashed. Now either you come with me quietly or..." Pitch blackness filled Anne's eyes, and her fingernails became impossibly sharp, curved talons, like eagle's claws sewn onto a human's smooth hand.

Bella could not move. She could not think. With her wild, horrific expression, the razor-sharp fangs curling over her lips, her ominous stance and the sheer ebony eyes, Anne seemed bestial and savage, completely removed from her humanity. She seemed – like a _vampire._ In Bella's mind, the word 'vampire' had two definitions – One, the soulless husks of legend and tale, drinking blood by night and shying away from sunlight, the 'blood-suckers' Jacob used to tell of that only appeared in storybooks. The second were the ones she had met, the ones that were beautiful and perfect, without flaw or any sign of ugliness (for Anne truly was detestable in her vampiric state) and, well – a prettier copy of a human being, with super strength and lightening speed.

Now these two meanings blurred confusingly together to form the creature in front of her, all blazing red hair and flapping black cloak.

"I don't understand," Bella whispered, clinging to the blankets. Anne relaxed, and her expression smoothed into one of pity, her pupils retracting to normal size and her eyes becoming humanistic once more. "Bella..." she began, but suddenly froze, her entire body seizing up.

"We have to go!" she yelled, lunging forward and scooping a stunned Bella into her arms as easily as if she was a feather pillow. "LIONEL!"

"WAIT!" Bella screamed, as Anne raced from the room, and another person joined them, a handsome young man with curly blonde hair and a serious, grave expression, with the same animalistic posture and aura as Anne. His face became tight with anger as he saw Bella in a surgical gown, with syringe marks in her arms and neck.

"Anne, what did they – "

"No time, they're coming!"

Lionel cursed and took Bella from Anne, ignoring her yells and protests and frantic thrashing. They were stood in the Cullen's living room, and the evening sky outside draped everything into shadow. Bella was blind in the darkness, but Anne and Lionel's eyes glowed subtly, like a cat's, and she got a strange feeling that their eyesight was as perfect in the dark as it was to her in a brightly-lit room.

Between violent wriggles and screeches, Bella glanced out the window and saw six figures, six dark blots leagues away against the setting sun, running impossibly fast towards the house. The Cullens.

Bella completely lost it.

"EDWARD!" she howled.

"We can't take all of them at once, Anne," Lionel said in a low, fervent tone. "I know," Anne sighed, although utter hate seemed to disfigure her features as she stared heatedly out the window.

Lionel reached over Bella's thrashing body and placed a gentle hand on Anne's lean arm.

"You know what we have to do. It's for her own good." Here Lionel looked at Bella, and she shivered involuntarily in solemn blue gaze, as ancient and world-worn as the seas.

The Cullens were close enough now that Bella could see how their sizes ranged, from towering Emmett to diminutive Alice. Obviously, with their supernatural eyesight, they could see her clearly even from the distance they were away. A familiar, strangely less musical voice echoed over the empty valley.

"BELLA!"

Something pricked her painfully in her neck, like a bee sting. Bella turned her head and saw the glint of a syringe needle. Immediately, her vision began to blur and churn, and scarlet pools popped before her eyes.

"EDWARD! EDW –"

The pools turned to liquid, and blood filled her eyes, blocking out her consciousness. The last sight she saw was Lionel's impossible sapphire eyes, and the last sound she heard was a choked, desperate shout that echoed in her head long after she blacked out.

"BELLA! HOLD ON! I'M COMING!"


End file.
